In this communication age, content providers are increasingly investigating ways in which to provide more content to users as well as interfacing with new users that are unserved or underserved.
Communications satellites have become commonplace for use in many types of communication services, e.g., data transfer, voice communications, television program distribution, and other data transfer applications. In particular, data transfer may include coupling to the Internet to take advantage of various resources provided therethrough.
Optical communications systems such as broadband-type systems have also become increasingly popular to provide high speed Internet access to subscribers. Telephone companies and cable television companies are rapidly expanding the broadband infrastructure. As the Internet continues to grow, a demand for increased bandwidth also continues to grow. Applications such as video conferencing, on-demand video, and streaming audio/video applications consume much bandwidth.
Higher demand for capacity in the Asia-Pacific region and other emerging areas such as Eastern Europe and South America is increasing.
The United States has a well developed Internet backbone that provides broadband connectivity to a large part of the country. Developing countries as well as in locations also having not established high speed Internet backbones. It would therefore be desirable to provide a communications system that allows access to the Internet via the U.S. Internet backbone without the need to wait for buildout of terrestrial infrastructure to reach underserved or unserved customers.